#0 - March 4, 2007, 7:59 p.m.
It's remarkably easy, really. I don't think Blizzard are complaining about paladins with Crusader Strike and high AP. I actually think they're worried about spell damage paladins since it is much harder to mitigate Holy damage than it is physical damage, so this hits them harder and refocuses the tree upon the fundamentals. AP and crit.
Change 1 - removing Seals from the Global Cooldown
As a paladin one of the biggest problems and the biggest disadvantage of our spell caster based melee system is that uptime is often lost to the global cooldown. Since nearly all of our Seals have passive effects, removing them completely from the Global Cooldown means absolutely nothing besides ensuring that our Seals have the same incombat uptime as a shaman's self weapon buffs, which is certainly nothing imbalanced.
Change 2 - putting Judgement on the Global Cooldown
Here's the big change. Judgement is a great spell because it allows paladins to slot in attacks or effects between other cooldowns. Now arguably it was a great spell for this reason, but it's not our only spell anymore. I cannot justify the burst damage a paladin is capable of putting out in a second now. At the moment, a paladin with Seal of Command is capable of bursting FOUR simultaneous, crittable effects in the space of no time whatsoever as long as the Seal is up.
By changing Judgement to be on the global cooldown, you effect the burst damage ability of offensively specced spell damage and AP/crit Ret and Holy paladins WITHOUT nerfing the actual damage done. An extra 2.5 seconds before a paladin can heal means a lot. An extra FIVE seconds if you include Crusader Strike means a great deal too. In addition it also prevents the ludicrous in bubble damage we are known for, by preventing it from occuring for several seconds.
How does this effect other specs? It is possible that putting Judgement on the global cooldown could potentially effect tanking paladins however I doubt this since in my experience for all the cooldowns a tankadin has, there is a remarkably easy way of slotting them into the 8 second Consecration window that governs most of their tanking. It has absolutely no net effect on healadins besides meaning they can't heal for a moment after a Judgement.
The Big Change - a new version of Judgement of Command
The third problem that faces Retribution paladins in particular is this. Judgement of Command does far, far too much burst damage for anyone with lots of spell damage, far too little for us, and it's balanced based upon those with tons of spell power. The addition of the stun based burst damage is also a bit of a slap in the face meaning our maximum burst damage is always capped based upon the use of our stuns. Therefore, inkeeping with Blizzard's policy on nerfing burst damage, I intend to nerf its burst while buffing its sustainable damage.
Let's think about this properly. The current Judgement of Command rank 6 does 228-252 damage with a 43% coefficient, and 456-504 when the target is stunned, with that same coefficient. Judgement of Command with my 1050 AP with JoTC active and Vengeance up for me does a minimum of 744 damage and a maximum of 807 damage. That's a rather low amount of spell damage being involved. If, for example, I were to increase my spell damage to a somewhat comical 500 and add Judgement of the Crusader on top, my damage would increase to a maximum of 979 on top of the greatly increased healing and the increased damage coefficients in other areas such as Consecration. In addition Seal of Righteousness would also be greatly enchanced by this setup, approaching these figures.
The biggest problem though is that every paladin no matter how undergeared they might be, so long as they can pull together any small amount of spell damage its going to crit for 1400-1600 on 30% or so of their JoCs. That's obviously a bit of a problem if you've got spell damage paladins going around with practically infinite healing capabilities in full plate mail, critting stuff unresistably for nearly 2000 damage every 8 seconds. Not to mention what happens whenever Holy Shock gets involved and they can autocrit and still maintain a solid JoC crit rate of at least 10% by simply being specced down the Ret tree.
So how do you fix this mess? You've got a Judgement that scales best through excessive use of a stat that most paladins that will use it, do not have excessive amounts of, and rewards the wrong type of paladin unduly.
The answer thankfully is simple.
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[b]Judgement of Command (rank 1) - Inflicts 30% of the paladin's current attack power in Holy damage upon the target (20% spell damage coefficient)
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Let's take our basic 1050AP paladin again with 171 spell power. Not a huge amount, but enough. The maximum Judgement of Command can hit for now, under any circumstances with that AP and JoTC up, is now 473 damage. So it's a nerf for the average paladin. However, unlike the normal JoC, if the paladin uses Blessing of Might, that damage increases by 66. Compare it to the average normal JoC and you find that the normal JoC does a maximum of 502 damage.
Ok. So no matter what happens now, a 1050AP paladin has lost damage over rank 6 SoC. That's not a good thing, right?
Wrong.
See, what the new JoC does is scale appropriately with a paladin's attack power independantly of the crappy and expensive stat of spell damage. A level 20 paladin with 300AP will hit for 100 Holy damage up to a maximum of 200 which is consistantly higher than the current version, and JoTC's spell power means less at those levels than higher ones. More importantly, however, is JoC's effects at higher APs. The base JoC will always do about the same damage as the current one if you follow the give or take average distribution of AP vs spell damage at paladins as you level up. So leveling paladins lose some damage on the whole, if they stick purely to the idea of JoC being used every single time HoJ is up.
If you dip below that, it does less damage. If you go above, however...
What this JoC loses in burst damage (which is what Blizzard wants) it gains, hugely, in sustainable damage. I'll parrot a few examples with Sanctity Aura and Vengeance active:
600AP, 710 spell damage ------> 389 damage.
850AP, 520 spell damage ------> 434 damage.
1050AP, 380 spell damage ----> 473 damage.
1300AP, 340 spell damage ----> 554 damage.
The actual point at which JoC exceeds the old base JoC with 0 spell damage in both cases at rank 6 is 840 AP (which is quite a considerable amount of AP). Your base 170 spell damage JoC is exceeded at 970AP in both cases. Here's the science part, though. Your basic 380 spell damage STUNNED JoC (which without any modifiers is is 667 damage) is only exceeded at an unbelievable 1970 AP. So it is an unconditional nerf to JoC's actual burst damage. The number of 1900AP paladins I know in PvP I can count on maybe one hand, and even then they are buffed up to the eyeballs.
The number of 1900AP raid paladins I know, on the other hand, is quite another matter. By making JoC scale with both attack power and spell power, it means raid buffed and group buffed paladins can reach values of JoC damage they could never do before. For example, your 1500AP paladin with 340 spell damage against an unstunnable boss would reach JoC hits of 626 damage consistantly. A maximumly buffed, 2500AP paladin with flat out flasked and every damage buff you could imagine could reach a maximum of 1004 or so damage if you took into account spell damage flasks as well. By comparson, a 2500AP paladin using a Thunder would do 1401 damage in melee.
This would have the effect of turning Judgement of Command into a strike useable on raids for significant amounts of damage.
So what have I done?
1. Nerfed JoC's burst damage dramatically to the point where only the most dedicated of AP/crit paladins are going to reach those values again in PvP.
2. Achieved a great degree of independance from spell damage by making the paladins other, resulant Holy damage decrease in value by enforcing this massive amount of AP.
3. Turned JoC into a properly scaling spell that, god forbid, actually responds when a paladin makes themselves better in melee AND is effected by spell damage.
Conclusion
Run the maths yourself, Blizzard. What I have done for you here is, in the space of one post, fixed all of your problems with Ret and Holy paladin damage, both for yourselves and the community.
1. I've stopped the basic problem of the base paladin having far too much burst damage by enforcing the global cooldown, without impacting on the flow of the class.
2. I've nerfed the maximum value of the damage involved while preserving most of the sustained damage for most paladins of the appropriate gear level.
3. I've given paladins a raid usable strike that does not trouble other classes in PvP unnecessarily in PvP, while staying within the Seal and Judgement system provided.
4. I've reduced the effect of spell damage upon a Retribution paladin's performance as most Retribution paladins desire.
Now I've solved your problems. Please, I want you to consider this a fix.
